To Sao Paulo de Loanda . 
21 
and the despair of the lexicographer. During 
the matumbe the relations “ wake ” the toasted, 
swaddled, and aromatized corpse with a singular 
vigour of drink and general debauchery. 
I arrived with curiosity at the capital of Angola, 
the first Portuguese colony visited by me in West 
Africa. The site is pleasing and picturesque, con¬ 
trasting favourably with all our English settle¬ 
ments and with the French Gaboon ; for the first 
time after leaving Teneriffe, I saw something like a 
city. The escarpment and the sea-bordering shelf, 
allowing a double town like Athenae or Thebae, a 
Cidade Alta and a Cidade Baixa, are favourites with 
the Lusitanians from Lisbon to the China seas, and 
African Sao Paulo is reflected in the Brazilian Bahia. 
So Greece affected the Acropolis, and Rome every¬ 
where sought to build a Capitol. The two lines 
follow the shore from north-east to south-west, and 
they form a graceful amphitheatre by bending 
westward at the jutting headland, Morro de Sao 
Miguel, of old de Sao Paulo. Three hundred years 
of possession have built forts and batteries, churches 
and chapels, public buildings and large private 
houses, white or yellow, with ample green verandahs 
—each an ugly cube, but massing well together. 
The general decline of trade since 1825, and es¬ 
pecially the loss of the lucrative slave export, leave 
many large tenements unfinished or uninhabited, 
while the aspect is as if a bombardment had lately 
